Compensation Bill [HL]

I ought perhaps to explain to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Wirral, that I was not really meaning to take a swipe at lawyers. I was trying to say, in an ironic fashion, that, for once, I would trust them to curtail such debate and not to spin it out in the courts. I have huge respect for their intelligence and think that they would find it fairly simple to knock out something irrelevant. If the clause said, ““shall””, they would immediately knock it out as irrelevant and not spin it out. I had meant to say that. Notwithstanding that, it might amuse him that I have on my wall a cartoon from the 1750s of a cow with a very skinny chap pulling at the horns and another very skinny chap pulling at the tail. In between, there is a very fat lawyer sitting on a milking stool, milking away, and, on the other side, there is a very fat judge who is saying, ““This is a very tricky case””. I do not think much has changed in the public perception of these things over the centuries. I shall speak to Amendment No. 13 because I found it to be a very interesting attempt to try to clarify ““desirable activity””. One reads the Bill thinking that it is trying to stop people being sued for taking part in adventure sports or adventurous activities, but it does not say that anywhere. In her response on Clause 1 about statutory duties, the Minister used the word ““accountants””. I suddenly realised that the Bill refers to negligence in general. It does not define that it is to do with adventure or risk. One could say that it might be highly desirable, and to the benefit of the general public, for an accountant to set up a scheme reducing the tax liability, but he might be negligent in the way that he did it. That could fall under the Bill because it says nothing about risk and danger. Maybe someone suddenly realised that Clause 1 can apply to any negligence in any field whatsoever, hence the challenge about how the provisions are narrowed down by ““statutory duties””. Amendment No. 13 highlights that we are trying to introduce into Clause 1 the concept that the Bill is about adventurous or risky activities that imply physical danger, not financial danger or things like that. I suspect that ““desirable activity”” is too wide a definition and later I shall speak briefly to Amendments Nos. 5 and 7 which change the definition to ““legitimate sporting, recreational or other socially beneficial”” activity. But then I thought about trees, because I am not sure that that definition encompasses trees. Tree climbing is essential. I can remember when my son Richard fell out of a tree at school and broke his arm. The school very nervously rang us up, and we told it not to worry and that we were not going to sue because that is part of normal educational activity. It was as pleased as Punch. One has to learn some time. Going back to something the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Wirral, said earlier about trying to protect teachers against not being able to sue, I think that they should be as unable to sue as anyone else. If someone has been stupid, just because he was the teacher, I do not see why he has any greater right to sue than a pupil. If he takes a risk and gets it wrong, he should, if anything, have less right because he should know. The only way one learns how to handle risk properly is by taking risks when young and by getting away with them. That needs to be drawn out somewhere. The other night, I spoke about climbing a mountain much too late, coming off it and suddenly realising that the compass bearing was wrong. My two friends and I took the decision to go back and spend the night in a shelter on the top of the mountain, rather than risk going further. If we had not done things in dangerous circumstances before, we would not have had the confidence to take that decision and we would probably have walked over the edge, like the chap we found in the shelter when we got there. He had already fallen over the edge and could not get off the hill. We hauled him off the next day and found the rescue team coming up. That was interesting because he did not have the experience and had obviously not climbed under adverse conditions often enough in the past. The only way one learns is by taking risks. Otherwise, one is in danger later on. I do not think that this list is the correct way to go about this, because of the things that it leaves out. For instance, my noble friend Lord Chorley, who has had to leave early, pointed out new Clause 1(2)(g),"““the advance of amateur sport””." He is not sure that that is wide enough and would like to tackle it at another time. New Clause 1(2)(l) covers,"““the promotion of the efficiency of the Armed Forces of the Crown””." I know that the Health and Safety Executive has now imposed such restrictions on military training that the Armed Forces are never put in situations of real danger. As a result, the first time they encounter it is on the battlefield. More soldiers will be lost because they have not handled danger in controlled circumstances, where some of them will get hurt. But more will be killed on the battlefield if they do not take those risks early. We have to realise that and accept it. Clause 13 is a brave attempt in the right direction. I am not sure that it is right, but I welcome it because it has opened up this debate. The definition of desirable activity will have to be sorted out for Report.